Entrepreneurship requires a lot from the person pursuing it. You have to wear many hats if not, all of them in the first few years especially, from product designer to marketer to salesperson to accountant.
And don’t forget about all of your responsibilities at home. Despite running a business, you still must care for your children, nurture your relationship, hang out with friends, and pursue passions that make you whole.
How successful entrepreneurs manage to motivate themselves to be productive every day will forever be an interesting area to study. But they’re doing it. And you can too.
Here are five ways entrepreneurs can elevate their productivity.
Establish Workflows
As mentioned above, entrepreneurs have a lot of responsibilities on their plates, especially in the early years of their businesses. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by these responsibilities and lose productivity if you don’t have systems in place.
Proper workflows can benefit your mental health as much as they can your business and productivity. Working in an unorganized manner can cause a lot of stress, which eventually leads to burnout.
When you create seamless workflows, it helps you organize and execute tasks efficiently. This makes things much more straightforward and less stressful. And you’ll be a happier, more effective owner because of it.
The first step is auditing your current processes for your tasks. What steps do you take from start to finish? After you answer this question, move on to removing unnecessary steps in the process.
Then, finalize the details of the steps you’ve kept. List them in the order of when they should be completed. And put these steps into a polished document that you and anyone on your team can easily understand and execute.
Repeat for every task that can benefit from a repeatable workflow.
Manage Your Time Intently
The best and worst thing about entrepreneurship is that you’re the boss. So, you’re responsible for determining what must get done each day and ensuring it happens. You essentially have to decide what a productive day looks like and execute it.
Time management is critical for this. Without time management, you’re at risk of getting nothing done and/or filling your time with busy work. On the contrary, managing your time intently leads to the completion of tasks and the achievement of goals.
There are formal time management techniques like the Pomodoro Technique or the Eisenhower Matrix. Explore these if you want something already laid out for you. Otherwise, you can customize the way you manage your time.
For example, you could make a to-do list for priority business tasks each day and block off time in your calendar to complete them. You could figure out when you’re most productive throughout the day and restrict work to these times. Or, once you complete an urgent project, you could follow it up with a nonurgent one, and continue that pattern throughout the day.
Find the time management method best for you and commit to it.
Find Balance
Many entrepreneurs think they must consume themselves with work to be deemed productive. But this is far from the truth. The most productive entrepreneurs master balance. They’re just as committed to their personal lives as they are to their professional ones.
You must be too if productivity and success are what you want. Setting personal and professional goals can help promote balance in your life. It’ll inspire you to make time for life outside of business, which is often the hard part about creating a healthy work-life balance.
Write down what you want to achieve personally and professionally on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Professional goals can include:
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Finishing a project by a specific time
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Learning a new skill or business process
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Conducting a weekly team meeting
Here are some examples of personal goals:
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Starting and sticking with a new hobby long-term
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Clocking out of work at a specific time each night
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Taking the weekend off to spend time with family
Reserve time in your day for business and personal endeavors to ensure you’re living a healthy work-life balance.
Eat to Fuel Your Body
People, in general, struggle with nutrition. But entrepreneurs are especially prone to it. Most would say busyness doesn’t offer the luxury of eating three nutritious meals a day with healthy snacks and drinks in between.
But you can be busy and eat right when you’re intentional about it. And you absolutely want to be, considering filling your body with lots of fats, sugars, and processed foods is horrible for your energy and cognitive function.
Better productivity is on the other side of eating to fuel your body rather than eating what’s quick and tastes good. Wake up in time to have a hearty breakfast. Also, meal prep to ensure you have lunch and snacks to last you throughout the work day. You can meal prep your dinners too.
Include a combination of the following foods in your meals that are known to boost productivity:
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Bananas
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Berries
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Avocado
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Nuts
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Eggs
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Salmon
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Spinach
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Carrots
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Sunflower seeds
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Yogurt
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Granola
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Water
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Steel-cut oatmeal
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Green tea
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Lean meats
This isn’t an exhaustive list. So, do some more research on foods that boost productivity and add them to your daily meals.
Care For Your Mental Health
It’s hard to be productive when you’re mentally exhausted. It’s even harder when you’re dealing with unmanaged mental health conditions. You’re emotionally unstable, burnt out, unable to focus, and your symptoms rule you.
None of these things support a healthy, productive you. So, caring for your mental health is a must to avoid the above. Finding the balance we mentioned above is a good first step. Lean on your friends and family to support and keep you motivated. Go to therapy if you have to. And take time off when you need to.
Staying productive and motivated as an entrepreneur is tough but absolutely possible. Take the advice above to take your productivity to the next level.